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Amazon Argues That Alexa Is Protected By the First Amendment in a Murder Trial (qz.com)
Amazon is sticking to its guns in the fight to protect customer data. The ecommerce giant has filed a motion to quash the search warrant for recordings from an Amazon Echo in the trial of James Andrew Bates, accused of murdering friend Victor Collins in Bentonville, Arkansas in November 2015. And it's arguing that the responses of Alexa, the voice of the Echo, has First Amendment rights as part of that motion. From a report on Quartz: The company's lawyers claim that Alexa's recordings and responses are subject to free speech protections under the US constitution's bill of rights, and that prosecutors need to provide more evidence that this audio is essential to the case. "It is well established that the First Amendment protects not only an individual's right to speak, but also his or her 'right to receive information and ideas,'" Amazon lawyers wrote in a court filing. "At the heart of that First Amendment protection is the right to browse and purchase expressive materials anonymously, without fear of government discovery." Amazon also referenced a 2014 case involving Chinese search giant Baidu, where a court ruled that results returned by a search engine are protected by the First Amendment.
My concern is that they aren't just saying that they don't have anything to hand over because nothing exists. Since they're not saying this, I'll assume that they do have something that could be handed over. Alexa? No thanks, I'll pass.
Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything) and how long it holds onto it (forever).
As much as I'm a supporter of personal privacy rights and data privacy, Amazon is way off with this argument. It is so clearly an attempt to forestall future insistence / requests by authorities for Amazon to be involved in extracting data and having to devote resources to this kind of request. Kind of like Apple with the iPhone but for less believable reasons.
First of all, the 1st Amendment protection is about the right to speak and publish opinions, or the right not to be forced to speak or publish opinions. Neither Amazon's nor the victim's right to speak or right not to be required to speak a certain message is at stake when the Alexa recording's history is discovered. The same would hold for your or my browser history being subpoenaed as evidence. That is a privacy issue, not a free speech issue, and nowhere in the Constitution is privacy an enshrined right, much as even I would like to believe.
These would be much more plausible arguments for Amazon to take:
- That the government has not demonstrated that delving into the user's private search history is relevant or may advance the case at all,
- That the data is not the property of the individual but rather a trade secret, or
- That Amazon is an unrelated 3rd party and should not be compelled to cooperate in something which it is peripherally related.
I actually think Amazon might fail on all of these fronts, because if the Alexa can record things like the sounds of a crime or victim asking for help, it's pretty plausible that they could be compelled to do so for multiple good arguments. It's not even like the data is being heavily shielded or stored securely as a selling point, as Apple's was. The very purpose of Alexa's data is to make purchasing and buying things from Amazon easier! It would be like Nest saying that the video it recorded in someone's home who got murdered was private and subject to free speech protections. Because no one shares videos, right?